Join us as we celebrate the release of Ken Woodley’s book, The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia. A signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public.
Ken Woodley was an award-winning journalist at The Farmville Herald in Prince Edward County, Virginia, for 36 years, with the final 24 years as editor. The community had been ground zero for white opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board decision of 1954. Rather than integrate classrooms, Prince Edward County shut down its entire public school system from 1959 to 1964. Woodley spent his entire career at The Herald, lending his voice, and his deeds, to the journey of racial healing and reconciliation. In 2006, the Society of Professional Journalists, Virginia Pro Chapter, presented Woodley with its prestigious George Mason Award for lasting contributions to journalism. The Road to Healing is his first book.
Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed its public school system in 1959 in “massive resistance” to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision of 1954. More than 2,000 African-American students were left without a formal education by the five-year closure. Their lives were forever changed. The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is Ken Woodley’s first-person account of the attempt to bring healing to that wound. The narrative unfolds in Virginia, but it is a deeply American story. Prince Edward County’s ongoing journey of racial reconciliation blazes a hopeful and redemptive trail through difficult human terrain, but the signs are clear enough for a divided nation to follow.